The Moon Lady
by Lord Kieran
Summary: Challengefic. Tom Riddle meets someone who leaves an indelible mark on his life.


**Title:** The Moon Lady

**Warning: **Character Death

**Challenge:** _Choose a chapter title from the book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and write a fic based on that._

**Disclaimer:** If you recognize it, it probably does not belong to me. How sad.

The first time he saw her he thought she was a dream. He had been running so fast through the trees that his breath came in fast pants and his body shuddered with exhaustion. The darkness under the canopy of trees was nearly absolute save where the full moon shone brightly through the branches. He had fallen hard on his hands and knees in a patch of moonlight that had him blinking blindly in the sudden brightness.

The sound of pursuit could no longer be heard behind him and he prayed fervently to a god that he half-believed in that they had given up the chase. Almost as soon as he could walk, the other boys in the orphanage had taken it upon themselves to make his life miserable. They said he was too quiet, too smart, and too unnatural. He held himself aloof from the children his age, finding solace in silence and shadows. He felt himself beyond them somehow, above them, and the other children sensed his restraint.

Sighing darkly, the boy was about to heave himself to his feet when he felt it. A chill in the summer air. A presence that had not been there moments before. He looked about in alarm, his heart still beating madly in his chest. He felt exposed in his solitary patch of moonlight, vulnerable. Slowly, not letting his rising panic consume him, the boy edged carefully out of the moon's silvery light and into the more familiar shadows that lurked all around.

As if waiting for just that occurrence, a woman stepped calmly into the light that the boy had just vacated. Long, silver hair flowed around her body almost glowing with the same radiance as her pale, white skin. She wore a long, simple gown so close to the color of her skin that it was almost impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. When the boy looked into her eyes, he found himself lost in a darkness so complete it made him feel as though he were falling into them.

The woman stood there in that path of moonlight for a long time simply staring down at him. Her expression revealed nothing on its smooth, ageless expanse. It left the boy baffled, nervous.

He had met many kinds of people in his short life, couples looking to adopt, the simple people of the village, young people, old people. Always he had known just what to say to an adult or how to present himself to get what he wanted out of a situation. He had never seen anyone like her and he did not know how to act. Surely he must be dreaming.

When the boy felt certain that they would continue to stare at each other until he woke from this strange dream, he saw something move from the corner of his eye. Without turning his head, the boy directed his attention to the ground where the woman stood. He blinked in surprise to see a serpentine face staring back at him.

The snake seemed to slide from beneath the woman's long gown, its smooth black scales moving soundlessly over the grass. When it reached the shadows where the boy sat, it raised its body so that it could stare directly into the boy's face. It flicked a forked tongue rapidly making the boy shudder as it touched his cheek.

When the snake spoke to him suddenly, the boy felt the breath leave his body in a rush. He had understood the snake! It all seemed too impossible to believe. Looking up to gage the woman's reaction, he was greeted by the sight of an empty patch of moonlight.

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The next time he saw the woman, it was two nights after the old man had come to bring him the news that magic existed and that he was to go to school at a place called Hogwarts. He had not been too surprised to learn that such a thing as magic existed and that he possessed it. Of course he did. It was only natural. But he was concerned that he would no longer be special. After all, how unique could magic be if there was a school to train people in its use?

Still, the boy vowed silently to himself that he would become the best and strongest magic user that the world had ever seen. He smiled down at the black snake curled silently around his arm. Even though he had tried to hide it, the old man had seemed surprised that the boy could talk to snakes. It was his special skill.

And he could never think about his ability to talk to snakes without thinking of the woman. He dreamed of her sometimes, of her wide, fathomless black eyes and long silver hair. Almost always after one if those dreams, he would spend the next day feeling happier than he could remember, though it was a wistful happiness.

So he almost thought he was dreaming when he looked up from his bed that night to see her standing in the center of his room. She looked exactly as he remembered her. Without thinking, he reached a hand out towards her. Pleading for something he had no words for.

For the first time he saw her smile: a slow stretching of pale lips and the barest hint of perfect white teeth. It caused a funny fluttering feeling in his stomach and made the boy want to squirm. He felt like prey that had caught the unwanted attention of the hunter.

Graceful and silent, the woman slid over the wood floor of his room. She moved almost like a serpent, boneless and deadly. The boy could only watch wide-eyed and speechless, his hand still outstretched, as she approached. When her smooth, pale hand grasped his own, the boy felt that no other experience in his life would ever compare. Warmth, tangible and soothing, spread up his arm from her touch and pooled in his chest. He felt light-headed, his mind spinning away from conscious thought. All worries and schemes and carefully thought out plans were forgotten. In their stead, the boy was filled with a heady sense of belonging and love.

The last thing he remembered before sleep took him in its grasp was the sound of a haunting tune filling his ears in a language that he had never heard before. He fell asleep with a smile on his face for the first time in many years.

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During his years at Hogwarts, the woman visited him several times. He told no one about these occurrences. There was no one that he trusted with his confidence and he felt that to speak of the woman out loud would cause her to never appear to him again. And although he would never admit it, the very idea pained him and left a feeling much like despair hanging over his heart.

The woman had never spoken to him in all the times that he had seen her but sometimes she would sing to him in that eerily beautiful voice. And just like the first time she had done it, it calmed the raging violence of his thoughts and left him contented.

The feelings of peace never lasted long, of course. Not with the burning ambitions that drove the boy to darker and darker methods to achieve his goals. He was not above ruthlessness and cruelty although he never allowed anyone to see that side of himself. Despite his caution he knew that the old man suspected and he made sure to be even more careful when he was around.

It never even occurred to him to be afraid of the woman learning of his nature. If he had given it any thought at all he would have shrugged it off. How could she not know everything about him? Just looking into her dark eyes left him feeling as though his very soul had been exposed to her critical gaze. And she had never given any indication that she was displeased with him.

In fact, she brought him many gifts besides the first one. The little black snake had been his friend for many years but had died soon after he had started school at Hogwarts. When the woman had visited him next, she had brought with her another serpent. This one a dark green and infinitely larger than the last. He had named her Nagini.

Since he did not wish for anyone to question why he kept such a large snake as a pet, the boy convinced Nagini to live in the Forbidden Forest near the school until he had graduated. She had reluctantly agreed. It frustrated him greatly that she could not remain in his presence at all times, but he did not want to arouse the old man's suspicions any more than they already were.

It was a great relief to the boy, now a man, the day he graduated from Hogwarts and went out into the world. He no longer had to return to the horrible orphanage and he could keep Nagini with him at all times if he so wished. She was a visible reminder of the woman, even more so because unlike the black snake which he had not bothered to name, Nagini talked frequently about the woman.

He had not understood at first who the snake was referring to. In his mind, he had always thought about the woman as simply that, the woman. She had given him no name to call her and he felt that she was above such a commonplace thing as a name. But when he realized who Nagini was talking about, he felt instantly the rightness of the title the snake had given her. The Moon Lady.

He had asked Nagini once why she called the woman that and the snake had stared at him in disbelief. _Silly human_. Nagini had hissed. _I call her that because that's who she is. And you would do well to remember that._

And he had.

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When the man first heard the prophecy, he was filled with an incandescent rage. Although he knew that part of the prophecy was missing, the part that his spy had managed to overhear was enough to turn his vision red and have him throwing curses all around.

His rage was so great that he ignored the urgent warnings of Nagini as he frantically tracked down the threat the prophecy had hinted at. The rat led him to their hideout, quivering in fright at the anger and hatred rolling in waves off the man. The man ignored the rat, ignored Nagini, ignored everything but the thought of killing the threat to his plans.

It was almost too easy to kill the husband so desperate to defend his family. When the wife threw herself in his path begging him to spare her child the man hesitated. For the first time since he had heard the half-spoken prophecy, a glimmer of doubt clouded his mind. There was a look in the wife's eyes, past the fear, past the blind panic, that reminded him of someone else.

Killing her was harder than anyone he had ever killed. After he spoke the words and the green light left his wand, ending the wife's life, he stood over her for a long moment. A feeling of foreboding came over the man and he paused in front of the crib that held the small child that threatened him. Such a tiny child, he thought absently.

Steeling himself, he raised his wand one last time and spoke the words that would end the prophecy before it had a chance to manifest itself. He stood, dumfounded and unable to move as the curse rebounded and struck him full on. Pain such as he had never felt coursed through him, worse than the Cruciatus curse, it ripped a terrifying scream from his lungs as his body collapsed around him.

He felt her presence before he saw her. It flowed into the room like a soothing balm over his feverish body. The woman, the Moon Lady had come. His eyes widened as he stared into her serene face. For the first time since he had seen her on that dark night so many years before, he felt afraid, ashamed to face her.

He turned from her beautiful face, from those dark eyes that saw too much. And he ran. His spirit fled that scene of death and destruction. It fled from the presence of the one person that he had come to realize he loved more than anything in the world. He turned back only once and what he saw froze his mind into a harsh landscape of fear and despair. The woman was reaching for him, her long, slender hand open in a plea that needed no words to understand. Overcome by his own terror and shame, the man turned from her, spurned her offer and fled into the darkness of the world.

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When the man at last found a way to recreate a body to house his wounded soul, bitterness and despair had hardened his heart and mind into a terrifying sharpness from which the world would not escape unscathed. He had a single purpose now, a single goal that filled his mind and consumed his thoughts. Destroy the boy that had led him to such a fate.

In the graveyard of his ancestors the man, now more of a monster than a man, taunted and teased the boy who would soon die by his hand. He let all the secret shame and silent anguish that had filled him since that Halloween night, fill his heart and spill over onto the boy. He was cruel, he was merciless, he did not care.

The boy managed to escape the monster, fleeing back to the illusionary safety of Hogwarts. This angered the monster but he would not let his blind rage cause him to make another miscalculation, another mistake. Not that any mistake could equal the one he had made that night.

Nagini was angry with him of course. He did not tell her of what happened that night with the woman, but the snake seemed to know all the same. She hardly spoke to him for months after he returned. But the monster would not give up on her. The snake was the only gift from the woman that he had held onto over the years and he would not part with her.

Finally, as the years started to pass, each with their failed attempts at killing the boy, Nagini forgave him. It is not in a snake's nature to hold grudges, after all. The monster almost cried the first night Nagini curled up with him in bed after his return.

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The final battle happened far from the way the monster had planned it. One moment he had victory in his grasp, the next moment it was gone, vanished like a mirage. He was left staring blindly up at the ceiling of the great hall of Hogwarts, his body brought down once more by a rebounded killing curse. He almost found it ironic but anger, fury, hatred rose up within him. He had been so close! So close to achieving all his goals, of finally finding his place amongst the lesser witches and wizards of the wizarding world. So close.

And now he was dead, dying. Nagini had fallen before him along with all his best fighters. All that promise. Gone.

This time, he saw her before he felt her. He had not seen her since that fateful night. Since he had rejected her outstretched hand. She was as beautiful and unchanging as always. Elegant and graceful in her long, white gown. She glided over the floor of the great hall as though it were not littered with debris and blood. None of it touched her.

It took him a long moment to realize it was not to him that she went. He was mesmerized by the sight of her, by the chill air that followed her and eased his fiery anger. When he did notice that she had another goal in mind than him, he was filled with a dark hopelessness.

She had eyes only for the child who had killed him once again. For the boy who had lived despite all odds. The boy that shared several of his darker traits and yet still managed to glow with an innocence and goodness that the monster had never had. A tear fell from the corner of his eye, the first he had shed in decades.

"Please." He whispered the word. Too tired and weary to do much else. He had had enough. Enough of fighting and struggling and never finding whatever it was that he was looking for. He could barely remember what it was he had been fighting for anyway. Why had he wanted so desperately kill the boy? It didn't matter, nothing did. Nothing except her.

She did not turn to look at him but she stopped moving towards the boy. The air was filled with a tense anticipation. The monster knew what she was waiting for. He did not know how he knew, she never said a word, she didn't glance in his direction. But he knew all the same.

"Mother." He called her, the word falling sweetly from his lips. "Please."

And he reached his hand out to her in a gesture that needed no words. He waited, patiently, at peace with himself. Finally he had spoken the word that had come to encompass everything the woman had meant to him.

Slowly, the woman turned to him, her dark eyes regarding him gently. He let tears stream down his face unchecked, uncaring. A smile spread over that flawless face rendering it almost angelic. She reached down and grasped his hand.

Joy, elation, happiness. The monster let the woman pull him up from the floor, though it was only his spirit that rose. As he stood beside her, he saw the room around him grow larger. Confused, he blinked timidly up at his mother. She smiled down at him from a height he remembered clearly from the first time he had met her. It was then that he realized he was no longer a monster, or a man. He was a child. Her child.

He smiled up at her and his smile turned into a laugh. It was a joyous sound that he had never made in his entire life but it came naturally from him as though he had always done so. With his hand grasped firmly in his mother's slender white fingers, the boy turned his back on the world, content in the knowledge that he had found his place to belong.

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The first and only time Harry Potter saw the woman was the day he defeated Voldemort once and for all. It was a day he would never forget for all his days remaining. So many lives were cut short that day. So much pain and sadness lingered in the air for days and months afterward. But pain such as that eventually faded into memory and then into dreams to be only half-thought of on a dark evening when the day had been long and hard. It was the woman he would never forget.

He had asked after the battle but of those who had been present, he was the only one who had seen her. The only one still alive anyway. He could not get the image of Voldemort, feared and loathsome monster, reaching out to the woman like a child would a parent. Beseechingly, helplessly, with a look of such sorrow and regret that it made Harry's heart hurt just remembering. And he had called her Mother.

When the woman had first appeared in the great hall, her eyes had sought him out, capturing him in their dark gaze. Harry had been frozen in place, unable to comprehend what was happening. He had seen such warmth and tenderness in her eyes it had left him speechless. There was a promise-unspoken and powerful-in her eyes that had made his breath catch and his heart race.

He had told only one person about what he had seen and heard. Hermione had listened patiently to his stuttering words until he had finished. Then she had sat beside him for a long moment a look of intense concentration on her face.

"You know," she began, "that reminds me of something Professor Dumbledore told me a while back." She allowed a sad smile at the thought of the dearly departed Headmaster. Harry waited patiently for her to continue.

"It must have been just after he realized he was dying, of course we didn't know that at the time." Harry shared another sad look with her before Hermione sighed and shook her head. "He had been talking about something completely unrelated before he turned to me suddenly and asked if he had ever told me about the Moon Lady."

Harry started suddenly at the name. It felt so right to him, so perfectly suited to the woman he had seen. The Moon Lady. He recalled clearly her long silver hair and pale white skin.

"He told me that she was one of the Fae, that she was the Queen of the Fae." Hermione smiled in a bemused way as though amused at the late Headmasters fanciful story. "He said that long ago she lost her only child to the children of men and that ever after she searches the world for him, sometimes capturing boys that share his appearance. Dumbledore insisted that he saw her once, here at Hogwarts. He said she was sitting quietly beside Tom Riddle. He said it was the only time he ever saw Tom Riddle with a true smile on his face."

Harry stared blindly into the quiet room. He could almost picture it in his mind. The pale woman sitting calmly beside Tom Riddle. One light and the other dark but each coldly beautiful.

"If what Dumbledore believed was true and it really was her that you saw that day, then perhaps Tom Riddle and the Moon Lady are both finally at peace having found what each was searching for." Hermione said finally. She smiled at Harry one last time before leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Harry pondered the wisdom of his friends words and found himself believing them wholeheartedly. He had seen the look of uninhibited joy that had taken over Voldemort's face the moment the Moon Lady had taken his hand. And he had seen the look of peace that had sparked in the Lady's eyes the moment Voldemort had called her mother.

Still, as he sat alone and cold in the common room, Harry couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if he had reached out to her instead. When her attention had been fixated solely on him, before Voldemort had called out to her. He couldn't help the tiny flame of regret that blossomed in his heart. Nor could he help the feeling of jealousy that filled him. The promise that he had seen in those dark eyes haunted him for the rest of his days.


End file.
